The Department for Education (DfE) proposal would require local authorities to keep the register and would place a duty on parents to inform the local authority if their child is not attending a state-funded or independent school.
The plans would also place a duty on schools to cooperate with local authority enquiries about whether specific children attend.
And local authorities themselves will have a duty to provide support to home-educating families if it is requested.
There is increased scrutiny of this issue after figures revealed that the number of children thought to be home-educated has doubled since 2013/14.
In February, a report from the children’s commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, found a huge increase in the number of children “disappearing from schools” to be educated at home. In 2018, it estimates that almost 60,000 children in England were being home-schooled at any one time – a 27 per cent rise on 2017. For 2018, the total figure of home-educated children could be as high as 80,000, the report suggests.
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